A disturbing string of occurrences on college campuses across the United States since the beginning of the Israel–Hamas war has included antisemitic “threats of violence” that surfaced online over the weekend, prompting Cornell University to send campus police to its Jewish center.
The Center for Jewish Living’s address, 104 West, was specifically mentioned in a string of heinous, antisemitic statements that were posted on a website unrelated to Cornell earlier today, according to a statement sent by Cornell President Martha E. Pollack on Sunday. The messages threatened violence against the Jewish community.
According to her, police were sent to the Jewish center after law enforcement was alerted. According to Pollack, campus police also reported the case to the FBI on suspicion of being a hate crime.
The president declared, “We will not tolerate antisemitism at Cornell,” and threatened to “punish to the full extent of the law” those who made such threats.
In a community threat crime alert released on Sunday night, university police stated that they are “investigating posts found on a website which include threats of violence targeted at religious groups throughout the campus.”
Police stated, without going into detail about the threats, that “evidence suggests that the intended locations were intentionally chosen because of the perpetrator’s bias.”
The threats coincide with heightened emotions over the Israel-Hamas conflict on American college campuses.
The Cornell Daily Sun, the school newspaper, said that Russell Rickford, an associate professor in the history department at the institution, caused controversy after a pro-Palestinian protest on October 15. Rickford declared during the crowd that he was “exhilarated” by the Israeli strike by Hamas.
He acknowledged that many Palestinians and Gazans “were able to breathe, and were able to breathe for the first time in years,” even as he denounced violence and the targeting of civilians. It gave me a rush. It gave me energy. And they wouldn’t be human if they weren’t thrilled by this challenge to the monopoly of violence and by this tipping of the power asymmetry. I felt ecstatic.
Subsequently, Rickford expressed regret for “the terrible word choice I made in a section of a speech meant to highlight grassroots African American, Jewish, and Palestinian traditions of resistance to oppression.”
“I detest violence and the deliberate targeting of civilians, as I stated in my speech. He addressed the newspaper, saying, “I apologize for the hurt that my careless comments have caused to my family, my students, my coworkers, and many others during this difficult time.
In an appearance on X on Sunday, Governor Kathy Hochul expressed her anger at the “disgusting & hateful posts on a message board regarding Jewish @Cornell students.”
Although it’s unclear at this time if the threats were “credible,” she did say that the New York State Police is investigating.
In order to emphasize that state police and the government will “support their efforts to maintain their students & campus communities safe,” the governor said she had met with heads of public and private institutions throughout the state.
She continued, “I also reaffirmed our strong support for free speech and the right to peaceful assembly, but I also made it clear that we will not tolerate acts of violence or individuals who harass and intimidate others with words or deeds.”
In response to a “alarming” increase in incidents since the start of the war, the Biden Administration said on Monday that it is launching new initiatives to combat antisemitism on college campuses.
Campus law enforcement and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security will collaborate to monitor hate speech on the internet. The Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism and extremism, reports that since the assaults in Israel, the number of antisemitic occurrences in the United States has increased by 388% when compared to the same period last year.
The Muslim and Arab American groups, who have also reported threats and events, have received less attention from the nation’s leaders than the Jewish community, according to complaints directed at the White House. Officials from the White House have been more approachable in recent days. White House staffers have contacted Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian American political officials around the nation. Biden also called the family of a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy that was killed in what investigators are calling a hate crime.